The present invention relates to wireless communication systems in general, and particularly relates to such systems that employ variable rate or variable bandwidth radio channels.
As wireless communication systems evolve, the range of services offered by such systems expands. The increasing diversity, sophistication, and quality of available services have attracted a rapidly growing number of people who use wireless communications in their everyday lives. For example, today's mobile terminal user may subscribe to a wide range of voice and data services, including Internet access, email, and other data services in addition to more conventional voice services. It is expected that the demand for wireless communication services will continue to grow as new services are added and existing services are improved.
While the demand for data services continues to grow, the resources available to provide such services are finite. These resources include both the call processing and management resources, generally referred to as network resources, as well as the radio resources necessary to communicate with individual mobile terminals.
In next generation communication systems, the number of channels or bandwidth allocated to a user varies, depending on the services being provided to that user. For example, in cdma2000-based (IS-2000) networks, a user might be allocated a fundamental channel to support low data rate services, such as voice. For higher data rate services, the user might be allocated a fundamental channel and one or more supplemental channels to support the higher data rates. Thus, in contrast to older communication systems, these newer communication networks may allocate substantial resources to a single user, potentially reducing the total number of users that may be simultaneously supported.